


my heart restarts, my life replays

by coldwaughtersq



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: (mild) breathplay, (the canon only kind tho), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hurt/Comfort, Implied (Past) Non-Consensual Touching, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Pet Names, Post-Season 4, Suicidal Thoughts (mention), Trauma Recovery, imagine your own S4 ending, quentin didn't die, what if the garbage fire never happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-21 15:11:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18704851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldwaughtersq/pseuds/coldwaughtersq
Summary: Eliot adapts. Because when all is said and done, he set these dominos in motion, back in Blackspire.And all this, he thinks, may be what being brave means, in the real world.------------My version of the "fuck your canon" challenge we're all living post-S4. Canon divergent from 4x08 - the details of how they did it all aren't important. Eliot's back and Quentin survived, and now they learn to live in the aftermath.





	my heart restarts, my life replays

**Author's Note:**

> Well this is definitely a thing that happened. I started this weeks before the finale and then. Well...
> 
> We all know how **that** went.
> 
> So here I am, taking a break from my post-S4 angstfest to bring you some cathartic, sexy nonsense about Quentin and Eliot engaging in some touch-therapy post-Monster. It's short and indulgent and I'm so glad it's finally finished. 
> 
> This was betaed extensively by a rather large group of people for a fic so small. I have to first mention my wives, [rizcriz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rizcriz) and [ohmarqueliot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmarqueliot), who have been incredibly supportive while I re-learned the rules of writing fic over the last few weeks. Special thanks to [miscreants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miscreants) who gave this an Eliot!pick for me, and [anahlia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anahlia) and [alexxaplin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexxaplin) who generously corrected my copious grammatical errors. All remaining mistakes are, regrettably, my own.
> 
> Also huge thanks go out to everyone in RAO, especially [peace frog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peacefrog) and [ConeyIslandBlitz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConeyIslandBlitz) for reading over various bits and giving me suggestions and generally reminding me that everyone feels like an imposter sometimes but that doesn't mean you can't still do the thing. <3 I love everyone in my bar. Thank you for hanging with me. _This one is for all of you._
> 
> I am not affiliated at all with The Magicians, and will earn no income from this story. I'm just a fan, here to transform what is into what could be, _in aeternum_.
> 
>  Title is from the gorgeous [Atlas: Touch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G_xLGVtw8g) by Sleeping at Last.
> 
> Almost forgot to mention: I tried to be descriptive in my tags, but if you have a question about potential triggers in this work please send me a message on tumblr ([coldwaughtersquentin](https://coldwaughtersquentin.tumblr.com)) or tag me on twitter ([coldwaughtersq](https://twitter.com/coldwaughtersq)), and I'll be happy to discuss specifics with you if you need me to.

Eliot knows that asking for what he wants has never come easy for Quentin. Even when they were together at the mosaic, Q either took what he wanted, or waited for what Eliot decided to give him. He’s always been... awkward with his words, his brain moving at the speed of a bullet train in a body that could barely move as fast as a mid-sized sedan. His mouth tripping, tripping over words as his hands and fingers waved to try and articulate a point that might have happened five minutes ago, or might not be happening for another two minutes.

 

But since the Monster, since someone else had driven Eliot’s body - led Quentin around by that body like his devotion was a collar - he barely talks at all, and it’s almost worse. 

 

They sleep in the same bed, they kiss like the world is going to end tomorrow, and they moan together when Eliot bottoms out inside him, wringing a year and a half’s worth of tension from both of their bodies.

 

But...

 

They don’t talk about The Monster. Or Blackspire. Or the Mosaic. Quentin tried, once, stuttering over his thoughts until he lapsed into silence; his shoulders hunched, his hands bunched up in Eliot’s shirt, his breathing shallow. The words hadn’t come, and neither had sleep. They had laid there, clinging to each other until the dark from the windows became light, listening to each other breathe and not talking until finally, _finally_ , Quentin had relaxed in his arms, carried off by sheer exhaustion.

 

They don’t really  _ talk _ about much of anything anymore, and Eliot hadn’t thought of everything they’d shared that  _ that _ would be the part he misses the most. They discuss the weather. They pass each other cigarettes on the balcony, they walk Kady’s dog to the park and back. They bicker with Kady about her school for hedges, and listen to Alice complain about the Library. Quentin reads books while Eliot listens to music and neither of them drink but they do sit in sobriety together, mostly comfortable in the silence.

 

They don’t talk about the way Quentin sometimes startles when Eliot enters a room quietly, the broken plates they’d swept up together in the first few weeks, or the meals that Quentin picks at or skips entirely, too nauseated to swallow. They don’t talk about the pained look on his face, the stiffness in his shoulder, the shuddering, uneven inhalation when Eliot had - once - reached for the spot on his neck where he’d caressed him nearly every day in Fillory. They don’t talk about Eliot’s relentless drive to touch, touch touch, about Quentin’s need to set the terms of that touching. They don’t talk about how sometimes Quentin watches him, intensely, like he’s looking for someone else behind Eliot’s eyes and smile.

 

They don’t talk about it. Eliot adjusts.

 

He learns to close doors loudly, how to put weight in his steps and where the creakiest parts of the floor are in Kady’s apartment. He starts talking to himself as he travels, a kind of cat bell to announce himself to the others, so as not to startle anyone with sudden appearances. He asks before he reaches, reminds himself that his hands did the damage. That there may be things they can’t undo. He keeps a mental list of places he is Not Allowed to Touch - the smooth expanse beneath Quentin’s ear down to his left collarbone, the join of his jaw and neck when they were kissing, Quentin’s left wrist: the one most often pulled tightly to drag him from place to place, the space on the top of his right thigh, just above his knee… 

 

Eliot adapts. Because when all is said and done, he set these dominos in motion, back in Blackspire. 

 

And all this, he thinks, may be what being brave means, in the real world.

 

So, when, after a month of learning to navigate their new, silent reality, of not scratching the itch that Eliot can practically see growing under his skin, Quentin deliberately shuts the book he’s been researching from - well, trying to research from - all morning and pushes back from the table, Eliot can’t say he expected it. When Quentin clears his throat meaningfully, and says Eliot’s name, it feels like the beginning of something different. Kady smirks at him and Alice just looks down at her books like nothing is happening at all, and Eliot wonders what happened that this became his life, and not hers. 

 

Quentin is tapping his fingers against his thigh as they mount the stairs, it is the only way he let himself express nervous energy anymore; as if anything bigger ran the risk of drawing attention to himself, bringing down the wrath of something that cannot be contained, and Eliot feels a crashing wave of rage and guilt again, that they ended up here, and swallows it down like acrid seawater. 

 

It’s not surprising that Quentin leads them to the bedroom they’d claimed as their own, one the Monster never entered, because he didn’t understand human-shaped concepts like ‘sleep’ or ‘sex’ or ‘rest’ (and Eliot had never been more grateful for that than the moments when his friends tried to piece together what exactly he and Q had been up to in that missing year). This was their space, as much as either of their bedrooms at the physical cottage had been in school, as much as their royal suites has been in Fillory. Filled with other people’s furniture, but their books and records and clothing, not - not a home, yet, but something close to it.

 

Eliot half expects Quentin to shove him up against the door, or pull him over to the  bed, crashing their mouths and bodies together so there isn’t enough space for words between them, but instead, he just stands there, runs his hands through his hair, bites his lip, looks everywhere but Eliot.

 

"Q, what-?" Eliot starts, as the door swings closed behind him, but Quentin cuts him off.

 

"No, El, I just-" Quentin laughs humorlessly, holding a hand out for space. He’s deliberately just three steps too far away to touch, and Eliot knows. He knows that Quentin has to make that space. But it doesn’t stop his hands from twitching  at his sides. “Just. Wait.” Quentin takes in and exhales a large breath, and says, “I need to-“ before stopping again, frustration etched into the tightness of his brow, the flat slash of his lips.

 

Eliot swallows down his first response,  _ what do you need,  _ and settles in to wait. Quentin can take all the time in the world. The Library is in Alice’s hands at the moment, but that works for her. The hedges are (mostly) under Kady’s command, Julia is answering prayers and exploring her potential as a goddess,  Margo and Josh are back in Fillory with Fen, the Monster took his body and fucked off to parts unknown. For once, they have quiet. They aren’t needed. They have time.

 

“I need to ask you something.” He says, after a few more steadying breaths, and Eliot can’t help himself this time, he has to cut this tension somehow, has to make sure this isn’t something dire. Needs to see Quentin react, just a little, so he knows where to push, and when.

 

“Honey, I’m flattered, but I was hoping to be the one to propose.” He’s grinning when Quentin frowns at him, and then rolls his eyes.

 

“Eliot, I’m- trying to say a serious thing, here.” He says, and then gives up on the indignation with a sigh. “And  _ if _ I ever propose to you, asshole, I won’t be stuttering over it.” Eliot feels his grin go soft, at that.

 

“Oh, Q. It’s so cute that you think that.” He wants to gather Quentin in his arms and bury his face in his hair because Eliot’s heart is just so gone, gone, gone on this man. It would be ridiculous if he weren’t the one living it, this feeling that is overflowing out of his chest into his arms and his hands and his fingers as they twitch again, against the space between them; like they know that banter isn’t going to solve the problem that Quentin brought them up here to address in the first place. Meanwhile, Quentin is starting to look offended again, so Eliot rubs his palms against the fabric of his slacks, instead of reaching out to press his luck, and guides him back to his original subject. “You needed to ask me something?”

 

Quentin nods then, his expression rolling back into nerves as he swallows, hard, and wraps his arms around himself. “Do you - Do you remember when,” He pauses long enough for a tremor of stress to pass through him. Eliot forces himself to stay still while Quentin shakes and then looks down at his crossed arms. “When you said you would- give me anythingIaskedfor?” The words run together at the end, mumbled, but Eliot understands him anyway.

 

And he does remember - the smell of soft-packed garden dirt, of growing vegetables after a rain, of woodsmoke and baking bread and lye soap and rosewater and Quentin, gathered up beneath him in their bed, in Fillory. Eliot remembers candlelight playing across his skin and his hair as he buried his face in Quentin’s shoulder, gasping, laughing, delighted. Remembers trailing kisses up to Quentin’s mouth, touching their noses together, and saying  _ “You’re so good, sweetheart. So good. I’d give you anything, anything you asked for”. _ Before Arielle, before Teddy, before arthritis and grandchildren and death, and in-between, too.

 

He’d offered it in good faith, and more than once. He meant it as much then as he means it now.

 

“I do.” He agrees. And Quentin nods, his eyes closing against a rush of emotion - relief? - while he breathes again.

 

“I need to. Do that now.” Quentin said, his fingers tapping his crossed arms on overdrive, his eyes traveling the room, and Eliot takes a careful step forward, stopping with Quentin just outside his reach.

 

“Name it.” He says, but Quentin shakes his head, sighing.

 

“Not like….” He trails off, one hand swinging in a small, silent wave that sends Eliot’s heart spinning, even as Quentin growls softly in frustration. “I can’t, actually. Ask. I-” Eliot doesn’t have a response for that, and part of him wonders if they’re going to play emotional chicken forever. If not being brave the way he’d intended right away had contributed to this. If he had been right to give Quentin time to heal from the trauma of the Monster before tying that dropped thread back to the bundle of knots that is Quentin Coldwater. “But maybe-"

 

“Can I show you?” Quentin asks, his face pinking and pinched, head tilted at an angle that sends short, fluffy strands of hair falling over the side of his face like a curtain, and Eliot is pretty sure there’s literally nothing he wouldn’t do to prove to Quentin that he doesn’t have to hide anymore. So, it’s not even really a question at all. 

 

“Show me,” Eliot confirms, holding his arms open in invitation.

 

Quentin’s chin wobbles, once, before Eliot sees a determined glint shine in his eyes, and he closes the two steps between them, breathing deeply. He looks terrified and determined, and Eliot wishes he’d had more time to prepare for whatever this is; to change the sheets or light some candles or open a bottle of shiraz. This moment feels important, intimate. This space between one breath and the next, when all he knows is intent, and not action. Quentin is going to show him what he needs, so that Eliot can give it to him.

 

“Kiss me.” Quentin tells him - not a question, a statement. An instruction. Eliot will never not kiss Quentin, if he’s asked - if he’s told to. Eliot could spend the rest of his life kissing him, reveling in the way Q melts into his mouth every time, the way he fights the burning need to breathe for the longest time, and chases Eliot’s face afterwards to get to the next kiss. He slides his hands up Quentin’s shirt sleeves, around to the backs of his shoulders to pull him in closer, but he drops them the moment he feels resistance, circling back down to Quentin’s elbows. 

 

Quentin is the one to break away though, this time, and Eliot lets him, watches him take a breath. And another. Tracks his hand as he gently takes Eliot’s wrist and lifts it up between them, holds it there. When he glances back over at Quentin, it’s to find him watching, eyes wide and focused on Eliot’s face, searching.  _ It’s me, It’s me, I’m here _ , he wants to say, but doesn’t. Instead, he watches Quentin watching him, and counts his heartbeats - one, two, three, four, five - until Quentin swallows, tightly, and places Eliot’s hand on his neck.

 

“Oh.” Eliot says, softly, feeling the shudder that runs through Quentin at the contact reflected in the shock sizzling through his own nerves - for entirely different reasons. It hurts to see Quentin’s jaw tighten, his eyes squeeze closed, and Eliot breathes through an indescribable tug in his chest,  _ again, _ at the thought of this being something Quentin would ever have to be afraid of. He wants to pull his hand away, to murmur and soothe, but Quentin still has a hold on his wrist. Quentin wants him there. “Red, yellow, or green?” He asks, softly, and Quentin, who had been slipping, slowly, out of this moment, pulls back in.

 

“Yellow,” He says, and then after another long moment, “Don’t move.” He squeezes Eliot’s wrist, gently, and shakes the stiffness out of his other hand, brings it up to settle it over Eliot’s heart.

 

“Tell me something true.” Quentin says, another instruction, and for a moment it’s Eliot that’s gone-

 

Snapped back into a memory of Fillory like he’s riding a rubber band. The afternoon sun shining in through the windows of the cottage, Eliot -chalk striped and tanned, laying on top of the covers while Quentin shook beneath them, still in the same clothes he’d worn three days ago, lost to the quest and to Eliot while his brain attempted to eat him alive. The first time they’d been through this cycle, it had been terrifying, the second, they’d borne it miserably but determinedly together. The third time, Eliot had gotten so frustrated by his helplessness he’d smashed their wine jug, and had to put it back together himself. This time, Eliot laid down next to him on the bed, his shoulder just barely bumping up against Quentin’s back, and said  _ “I know you have- a lot… Going on in there right now. Speaking from my own experience, most of it is bullshit.” _ Here Quentin had huffed what might have been a laugh, and Eliot remembered the elated, floaty feeling of having broken through the fog.  _ “But I’m going to tell you something true.” _

 

They’d made it a tradition, when Quentin was starting to disappear into himself - when he already had, because nothing could prevent that completely. They would sit on their bench, or in their bed, or on the mosaic, and Eliot would list off things that Quentin could trust - especially when he couldn’t trust his own mind.

 

“It’s been thirty-four days since you saved me.” Eliot answers easily as the memory clears, avoiding the lowest hanging fruit and going instead for something Quentin had helped accomplish. “Truth.”

 

Quentin nods, his face relaxing just a fraction, and Eliot speaks again.

 

“We had eggs and sausage for breakfast today, and you ate them. Truth.” It had felt like a victory, when Eliot had handed him a full portion and gotten an empty plate in return. Like a step in the right direction. Like healing. “You’ve read The Secret Garden to me six times, start to finish. Truth.” 

 

They’d found their copy in a trade with a traveling merchant that had wandered by to see the mosaic, had joined them in laying down the tiles for an afternoon. They’d traded stories and wine and food with the man for a look at his wares, and in addition to the candles, ink, chalk, and preserves, they’d found the book. “A bit high strung-” the merchant had said of the characters, “but a fine enough story, if you can follow it.” Eliot had laughed, because ‘a bit high strung’ could have described just about anyone they knew, and slipped the merchant an extra coin as he set off, in exchange for a promise to think of them if he came across anything else from earth.

 

Quentin swallows, and Eliot feels the movement against the heel of his hand, automatically swipes a finger against Quentin’s jaw. Quentin catches his other hand, says, “Green.” and brings it up as well, and this time his shudder starts as a sigh before morphing into a full body shake.

 

“Sweetheart,” Eliot says, helplessly, as it clicks with him finally, what Quentin is doing here. And yes, he’d heard about that night from Julia but it was one thing to hear from an observer what had happened and another entirely to see his hands, under his control, wrapped around Quentin’s throat. To see Quentin’s fear, to feel it in the bunching of muscles and tendons beneath him palms. To hear Quentin breathe, shallow and quick, through the memory playing beneath his eyelids.

 

“Yellow, yellow, yellow.”  Quentin doesn’t wait for him to ask, chants the word under his breath like a prayer, and so Eliot waits, misery and nausea and hope swirling in his gut as he watches his hands, unmoving, before he remembers.

 

“The first time we did this, you said it made you feel safe.” His voice betrays him, tripping over the idea of safety, which had made so much sense in their peaceful mosaic bubble, and had to seem preposterous after a year of being dragged on a godly murder spree. “Truth.” He feels Q’s eyes on him before he looks up, and sees the sheer naked trust there, the soft-hearted sharp-edged center of Quentin. It was nearly overwhelming.: that Eliot had ended up here, in this reality, with this man, with his belief. 

 

A year and a half ago, Eliot had seen that trust and chosen to run.

 

He was not going to make the same mistake again. 

 

“It’s  _ him _ .” Quentin says suddenly, sounding as lost as Eliot feels, “I close my eyes and I can’t remember us.” He leans, just a little, into Eliot’s hands, and Eliot’s heart breaks, just a little, as he speaks. “He was going to kill you and I- I wanted him to take me, too.” The words leave Quentin’s lips and enter Eliot’s ears and he stops processing for a moment. Because Eliot has already had to try to parse the idea of a world without Quentin in it, before Blackspire, and it’s not an experience he’d care to repeat.

 

“He didn’t.” Eliot says, after a moment, his own voice shaking. “Truth.” And then, when he thinks he can probably speak again without flying apart. “You are standing right here, now, with me, and he is gone. Truth.”

 

“Truth.” Quentin agrees, nodding, breathing deep, as Eliot tightens his fingers, slightly, runs both thumbs along the smooth skin of Quentin’s jaw, and pulls him forward, slotting their lips together, capturing Quentin’s breathy moan before it could escape into the room. He wanted. He wanted so much. He wanted to crawl inside Quentin’s skin, to camp out in the space between his ribs and his heart, to speak truth into the blood that pumped through his veins, the brain that worked and lied.

 

“Are you with me?” Eliot asks when they break off the kiss, when he allows Quentin to retreat, to catch his breath again.

 

“I’m here.” His response is quiet, but firm, his gaze steady on Eliot’s face. He isn’t sure, exactly, when Quentin  stopped shaking, but he has, and so Eliot decides to push, just a little.

 

“Can you tell me what you want, Q?” He prompts, and this time, the shiver he feels through his fingertips isn’t fear, the eyes locked on his darkened as Quentin pressed himself harder against Eliot’s hands.

 

“I want to remember  _ you _ .” Quentin gasps, and Eliot squeezes, just a little, his own heart in his throat and trying to jump out of his mouth. He tries to remember that this is Quentin, and he would give Quentin anything. But if the Monster took Q’s memories of Fillory, if he took this one in particular, then Eliot knows this isn’t the only thing that he wants to give Quentin, or the only thing that Quentin needs. So he releases the pressure, keeping his hands steady, running a thumb over Quentin’s adam’s apple. Eliot guides him in close, watching the slightly shattered look on Quentin’s face carefully for any indication that it’s about to tip between the knife edge of contentment and endorphin drop, before leaning in to place his mouth against Quentin’s ear.

 

“Remember me, then.” He breathes, and once again Eliot finds himself suspended between the  _ now _ and the  _ then _ , between this moment and Fillory, watching himself pinning Quentin into their mattress with his hips and his hands, pressing his face into Quentin’s hair, teasing light kisses across his jaw as Quentin breathed, his own hands tucked beneath his head and his pupils blown, gone. Eliot’s hands around Quentin’s neck, four months before Arielle, eighteen months before Teddy, fifty years before Eliot’s heart gave out watching Quentin put down tiles. 

 

Now: Quentin shivers, again, steps forward to lean against Eliot as he slides his hands into Quentin’s hair. “But remember this, too.” Quentin’s neck, exposed now, is red and flushed, striped just enough to stand out with the imprint of Eliot’s hands-  _ Eliot’s hands _ . That was what Quentin had asked for, in his hesitant, demanding, nervous, non-asking way. Eliot’s hands. But Eliot wants to give him more than that, this time.

 

These words don’t come easily to either of them, but Eliot shows him, had been showing him, will show him every day for as long as he’s allowed.  _ I love you _ , he says, pressing his lips to the raised, welted skin, over and over.  _ I’m here with you. I choose you. _ He curls his fingers into Quentin’s hair, shifts him gently for a better angle.  _ I love you. This is me being braver, darling. _ Quentin takes a step backwards, and then another, and Eliot moves with him, tracing the spaces where The Monster was (had been, would not be) and banishing him, a special spell made just for Quentin, cast with the oldest tut in the universe.  _ I love you. I love you. I will give you anything, anything you ask for. _

 

When they fall into bed, it feels like coming home.

  
  



End file.
